Blogger friend Daphne loves her all to pieces.

We all have stories to tell, hers are peculiarly Southern and like most of our mixed racial tales told south of the Maxon-Dixon line, they’re tinged with a streak regrettable sadness. Black people didn’t get anywhere near a fair shake under Southern skies before the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, admitting that fact means nothing more than acknowledging the truth of the times.
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I think Andrew Breitbart is a self-aggrandizing, corner cutting, race baiting, money chasing, media whore. Jeffrey Lord is an illiterate asshole and Shirley Sherrod doesn’t deserve a single day she’s spent under this ugly conservative sun.

Sonic Charmer has a different opinion.

I’m vaguely aware that there’s a controversy surrounding some government employee named Sherrod who was fired because she’s a racist but then she turned out to be not. But I didn’t know the details so I decided to Wiki it.

Reading about the controversy itself, it does seem as if this particular rap against her was unfair.

However, reading about the rest of Shirley Sherrod’s “career”, I think there are much worse things to charge her with:

She and her husband lost their farm when they were unable to secure USDA loans. Sherrod along with other activists sued the USDA in Pigford v. Glickman in order to protect the remaining black farms which were in danger of becoming shut down. The Department agreed to compensation which was to be paid between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1999. The event was considered as “the largest civil rights settlement in history, with nearly $1 billion being paid to more than 16,000 victims.”

Translation: She wanted the taxpayers to chip in to give her a below-market-rate loan to buy her and her husband a farm. They didn’t. So she sued the taxpayers. She won and got the money from taxpayers. $1 billion distributed among 16,000 people (oh sorry “victims”) equals some $60k per person. Although what do you want to bet that her share was more than the arithmetic mean?

I’m seeing things more Sonic’s way than Daphne’s. Partly because of things like this video (h/t Riehl World View)…

…and partly because I’m sick of being told what to think about people. I’m sick of the sophistry. Yes, Ms. Sherrod’s speech was the polar opposite of what it appeared to be, and her boss Mr. Vilsack — not Andrew Breitbart, not Fox News, but the Secretary himself — overreacted.

Does this mean Shirley Sherrod is a decent person? No. It means Tom Vilsack is a spineless jerk.

More and more, it looks to me like this: Shirley Sherrod spent 43 minutes lying about her motives and what she’s been learning on the job, and Brietbart unfairly played a few bits out of context, the ones where she told the truth about herself.

I’m tired of the duplicity. I’m tired of being told Sarah Palin is malicious because some stalking pervert moved in next door to her. I’m tired of being told just because someone can be called a victim of something and she happens to have dark skin, and a chestless jackal for a former boss, that her motives must be pure.

In fact, there are other crackpots and nutjobs in the mix as well. I’ve had it to here with the “because”-es. I’m fed up with being told Elena Kagan will be a great Associate Justice because she’s funny. Rush Limbaugh is evil because he’s rich. Dick Cheney deserves to die because he ran Halliburton. The Gulf oil spill is in good hands because Stephen Chu has a Nobel prize.

I’m at the Popeye stage with the sophistry; I’ve had all me can stands, and me can’t stands no more.

You put something out there that’s incorrect, or misleading, and there are only two possibilities after that’s found out: You were hoodwinked by someone, or you’re a liar yourself. Well, Brietbart has an iron-clad alibi about the edited video he received. If he was lying about that — if he was in fact the person responsible for whittling this thing down, and giving it an appearance so strikingly at odds with the real intent of Sherrod’s speech — there’s been plenty enough time for that to have been borne out. It hasn’t happened. There isn’t a shred of evidence that Breitbart was complicit in this.

Sherrod, meanwhile, has been helping to spread the word around that Fox News deliberately brought about her dismissal, and she knows better.

She was treated unfairly.

Only those who are withholding the intellectual vigor, or are coming up empty in an attempt to supply it, would infer from that that she’s a nice person. Just because you get the shaft, doesn’t make you a sweetie-pie.

I’ll keep an open mind, but this woman is really setting off a lot of alarms in my head. She fits a profile, and it’s not a skin-color profile. It’s one I would call “Play Dirty But Act Like You’re Playing Nice.”

Because, above all, I’m sick to death of liberals getting caught doing sneaky underhanded things, and then claiming someone conservative was responsible for making them do it. Enough of this. Obama and Vilsack overreacted, Obama and Vilsack can own the problem. For once. Even if Sherrod wants it to work out some other way. It’s their fuck-up.

Wow, don’t go feeling sorry for Marina Orlova. Girl’s got it made.

So much eye candy. Lady in the bikini…boat…lady…boat…lady…boat. I was trying to figure out if this was a private yacht or some kind of small cruise ship she had to share. Doesn’t look to me like she’s sharing it in any way. So she’s doing alright, or else has a sugar daddy in which case she’s doing alright.

This looks exactly like the beginning of Tomb Raider: Underworld. Except I think Lara Croft’s boat was diminutive by comparison.

And is that a picture of Bowser stuck on a Mac PowerBook?

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg makes the point that the word “fascism” is actually credited with very little by way of useful definition, and when one seeks to imbue the word with such a useful definition one runs into the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — the object of study changes in its properties, either in reality or in measurement, as it is studied.

Nevertheless, on page 23 he offers a definition so that the discussion can commence:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore defined as the enemy.

As I continued onward with the book, I thought back on this definition exactly as Goldberg intended, but I had another thought that he perhaps did not intend for me to have. The definition is slightly inadequate.

I see a mostly uninterrupted pattern, in which each fascist movement is an offering by one particular charismatic individual, usually a male. His wit, speechifying, masculinity, drive and flair are thrown in to every discussion about his ideas, as replacements for any logical demonstration that his ideas might make sense. To put it another way — nobody can construct a rational argument that his ideas have potential to bring about the desired results, and so wherever his apologists enjoy any representation at all, the discourse dissolves into a sloppy, childish exchange of observations about how good he is at talking to large numbers of people. This seems to be a constant in all fascist governments, the charisma of the dictator.

A few months ago we called it Obamalarkey:

Rhetorical defense of a dumbass idea, offered by subtly re-directing the discourse from the merits and weaknesses of the idea itself, toward the appealing but meaningless attributes of the personality most prominently associated with it.

As Goldberg points out, as this particular subject is poked and prodded a little bit more, it loses composition and becomes more difficult to define. But like I said, I wish he covered this part of it since it seems to be an integral component. Fascist leaders, generally, are not boring & dull. To achieve the minimal requirements of the dictator gig, they must demonstrate an ability to sell things contrary to the long-term interests of the buyer.

It seems almost medieval. King’s counselors rush up to him and say, Your Majesty! The royal coffers are nearly empty! Whaddya talking about, says the King, my country is very wealthy. All those farms with all those crops…they’re mine. I Am The State.

You know, I thought we had some kind of a revolution to do away with that kind of thinking.

I find it rather ominous: The one sequence of words you can string together to prove to your kids and grandkids that you’re senile, and have probably been batshit crazy for a good long time, is the one truth that has become more and more obvious to me as I get older: The commies are takin’ over. I’m now reaching the point where it is becoming undeniable, so maybe the time has come to check into assisted living facilities. Because from my point of view it seems the evidence is rock-hard and accumulating all around us.

Hat tip again to Smitty.

Cheryl Ladd.

Just because.

Yes, way to go Paul.

That would be a good bumper sticker slogan. The motto in Washington already seems to be Rahm Emmanuel’s “never let a crisis go to waste” — if it’s gotta go that way, might as well operate from a real crisis instead of a made-up one.

Greece brought down the Euro. Now, just ponder that. The European Union was chartered and they came up with a currency so they could compete against the dollar as a foreign investment vehicle. (Any kind of a “union” always has a central target in mind, which the union desires to surround horseshoe-style, and destroy; in this case it was us.) The EU achieved a competitive foothold against our currency, with much better results than any single country within could have netted by itself. It worked great, and then Greece tripped it up. That’s our future if we don’t change something. All of the evidence says so.

It’s a powerful argument.

Another thing: Congressman Ryan makes reference to our nation’s founding principles, our founding documents. If you read through Article I of the Constitution where it lays out the responsibilities and authorities of Congress, what you see there is an essay on what a legislative body is supposed to do. From a thirty-thousand-foot level, it is to pass laws and disburse money.

You’ve probably done this yourself. You might sit on some non-profit organization, maybe a band or orchestra for your kids’ school, the PTA…if you haven’t had such an experience, there is your own household. A new expense comes up and if it’s a low priority you’ll probably smack it down. If it’s a high priority, then you go back to these other places where you’ve allocated money, and you change the plans.

And then if someone comes up with more places to spend money, you start to get pissed. You go, waitaminnit…you saw what we just got done doing with this other thing over here. How come you didn’t say a single word about this new thing, then? We could have prioritized it.

And then they do it three more times. Each time waiting for the fancy new plans to be laid in, and then dong their cute little ambush…eventually you have enough and there’s some smack-down. You lay down a moratorium. Something to the effect of, if it isn’t mentioned right here right now, you don’t care enough about it so why should we. There’s no point trying to figure out what has priority over what, if your list isn’t complete.

Now look how this Congress has been operating. It’s going to go down in history in disgrace…and it’s going to go down that way, compared to other congresses, which really says something. Every new expense isn’t greeted with “Goddammit, why didn’t you say something while we were funding Cash for Clunkers? Or Recovery & Reinvestment? Or S&L Bailout?” Nobody has to face the music on any of that…it’s just “Ooh! There’s a way we can pick up some more voters!”

This isn’t going to fly, and it’s not the way the country was set up. Congress is supposed to make decisions on allocating money. That means they are supposed to prioritize, and that means they need to do this in big batches, not one little sales pitch at a time shouting “yes yes yes” at the tops of their lungs like Meg Ryan in the diner scene.

And that is a point that should resonate on both the left and the right. If you see value in some of what the Congress has been funding, you, too, should want it to work this way. Congress should be saying no to some things so that they can say yes to other things.

Hat tip to Smitty.

Very magnanimous and thoughtful of this punkweasel to give that little nod to the First Amendment, as he waxes lyrically about this “gatekeeper” idea.

You knew it was coming, folks. Shirley Sherrod is a perfect wonderful human being now, don’t dare say a word against her — call her “Saint Shirley” — and now that this horrible, dreadful nightmare has descended upon her, we need to go back and do something about these bad, bad bloggers. The “Internet is like this giant bathroom wall” upon which anybody can write anything about anybody. Something must be done! Need a “gatekeeper”!

We’re gearing up for a giant Architects-and-Medicators battle.

I’m putting it in that growing file, because Architects…and we are not a fringe group, we are a goodly sized half of humanity or something approaching half…see it as people doing things, and those things having an effect on other things. Like, DUH. That’s the way the entire universe works.

Just because someone’s late catching on to this, is that a necessity for creating more rules? Well, Architects see it like this; it’s a pretty short discourse. If you’re out-and-out lying you can bring someone some harm, and that is troubling — but we have libel laws, we have slander laws. Okay then. We already have laws. Conversation over.

Medicators, on the other hand, have this primal urge toward more and more regulation and they don’t really care who’s doing the regulating. I’ve often thought maybe they care a lot about not knowing. They want it done by a stranger. There has to be this system of elites and commoners, and most of the Medicators want to be on a first-name basis only with the commoners. They don’t want the responsibility.

So they want all of human activity to go into a great big bell housing, and then everything in the bell housing is affected by some magical focusing lens…which is someone they’ll never actually meet. They’re constantly doing this. All of humankind needs to be arranged into a giant “V”, like a big flock of birds.

We go ahead and do it and the results aren’t any better than they were before — the Medicator does not care.

They just want the ranking system. They care about the process, not about the results. So now I expect they’ll all rally behind this “gatekeeper” idea or something like it. Regulated is better. Until it isn’t. And then, somehow, it still is.

So that’s how I see it. There are people who will support this idea, not because they care about bloggers slandering people but because they absolutely loathe the idea of ordinary people being allowed to influence things. They aren’t terrified of ordinary flawed people like themselves making things worse; they’re terrified of their peers and compatriots of equal stature & rank making things better. That absolutely fills them with dread.

The character of the Medicator really comes out after some massive regulation scheme or social program has already been passed, and its deleterious effects on our lives begins to be felt. And then they invite you in on the massive bitch-fest. We’re sharing an experience, so let’s bitch about it. That’s how they do the medicating. Bitch about the weather, bitch about social security, bitch about the bus not showing up on time.

Mark Steyn commented once about a new slang that has developed in the UK: “It’s health-n-safety gone mad, mate; health-n-safety gone mad!” This is how it works. A new bureaucracy extends its tendrils into our lives, we’re all affected in the same way, life becomes less joyous and we get together and start medicating/bitching. Then come up with some new ideas about the next thing that has to be regulated.

The truth is, these people don’t care about progress, or damage for that matter. All they care about is escape, and what they’re trying to escape is a sense of identity. They want to be part of a comfortably large mass, each man within indistinguishable from the next one, and everything anybody does anywhere is attributable to some all-knowing regulatory busybody that is managed by magical strangers whom they don’t know.

This is not to say we will not find anybody who wants to be the gatekeeper. We will. We’ll find someone just chomping at the bit to become the gatekeeper. That’s the most frightening part of it.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Wise, wise man this is. I can see why they named him after me.

Here, as in all walks of life, the low-drama answer is the only one that works.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

It was with considerable reservation that I conceded the point the 43-minute version of Sherrod’s “unedited” speech (which was in fact edited) delivered a completely different sentiment from the much shorter one that was aired earlier. In view of that, and some other things, I came down hard on Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture who fired her.

I stopped short of saying anything good about her character though, and this video makes me glad of that.

Somewhere out there is a democrat talking point that says this: Talk these things up at your heart’s content, make money on your book deals, that’s all fine & good — but make sure at the end of the day that the character of conservatives is impugned. In fact, make sure that’s the case every time you end a sentence and come to a (.) dot.

Had Sherrod taken the time to think this thing out…or if she wasn’t making an effort to talk to morons…she would have seen the strategy runs into some real problems here. Andrew Breitbart received a video. The NAACP saw the same video. They both came to the same conclusion, as did Vilsack. This makes Breitbart a terrible person and the other two parties innocent pawns. How’s that work? Breitbart has gone on the record to say the video was whittled down before it got to him, and I know of no evidence to suggest anything different.

A blogger jumped to a conclusion. A cabinet-level official jumped to the same conclusion, as did an organized advocacy group. Only the blogger is a reprehensible monster. He fooled everybody.

I saw this before, recently. Yes, a number of democrat legislators voted for the AUMF, the Authorization of Use of Military Force in Iraq, so they could look all tough. And then, as if someone said “go!” it was time to be all dovish and anti-war. (Maybe someone really did say it.) Suddenly, it was George W. Bush’s war. He fooled us all. We’re still saying “Somewhere in Texas a village is missing an idiot,” but the idiot fooled us. Those right-wingers. So stupid, and yet successfully fooling everybody. And they never get fooled, oh no. They’re just evil.

Liberals would be able to connect with people so much better if they’d just allow us to make up our own minds about who’s a monster. They must have figured out somewhere they cannot afford to do this.

I took Sherrod’s side in this thing…at least, so far as agreeing the context is changed when you watch the entire video, which is true. Her speech had a point to it, and the point was that we’re all in the same boat when it comes to issues like losing farms and livelihoods, regardless of the color of our skin. Her speech had this point from beginning to end, so in that sense I think she got a raw deal. It’s really undeniable.

However, from about Wednesday on there has arisen a sense that Sherrod, personally, doesn’t really feel this way. She really does see issues as race-based even if they don’t need to be. She’s as racist as anybody else. From that point in time two days ago, I would have characterized this as likely-but-irrelevant. I left it unaddressed because it was not germane to the point, and it was idle speculation. Granting it the benefit of the doubt — Shirley Sherrod is giving a speech saying when we help people we should be race-blind, and she doesn’t personally believe this so she’s standing up there lying. Then her comments are taken out of context and she’s fired. Alright, you may say that’s poetic justice. But it’s still a raw deal, and not just for Sherrod. The people who saw the chopped-down version should still understand what was in the longer version.

But if that’s part of the story, it’s also part of the story that the woman is a liar and a manipulator. To me, we can’t even make it to the question of whether she’s a racist or not. We don’t make it that far, because she’s a democrat party activist and she’s read & chosen to practice this talking point about make-all-conservatives-look-like-monsters. Because her mouth moves faster than her brain, it’s extraordinarily blatant in this case.

One other thing. If you listen to her speech from beginning to end, it is a classic parable. Which means, among other things, there is some learning going on and the learning is worked into the story by having the protagonist practice values at the end diametrically opposed from what was practiced at the beginning. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge. Or Return of the Jedi. It is a tale of redemption.

Well, here is a problem encountered by the faithful left-wingers when they practice their “we’re wonderful because we’re liberals, conservatives are terrible monsters, even if the facts say we all did exactly the same thing” snake-oil. They don’t even know they ran into it, but they ran into it hard.

For forty years or more, they have used this cudgel called “political correctness” to transform our office workplaces into battle fields. During this time, it has been quite accepted, even tragically commonplace, to “Sherrod” innocent people whose remarks really were taken out of context. Breitbart, or whoever edited the video, was working entirely according to these rules. And I believe that was Breitbart’s original point. The underlying premise that validates this is, and I am turning on the bold font here on purpose, that bigotry in any form, even in appearance without substance, is a sin beyond any possible redemption.

I call it the impossible-to-achieve “Could Be Construed As” standard.

Sherrod told a tale of redemption. And it was about real bigotry. Even according to her own words, granting her every benefit of the doubt, it was ancient bigotry but just as real as the screen upon which you’re reading these words.

Is it possible to be redeemed after committing such a sin? This is not a question that can be settled on a case-by-case basis. There has to be a single unified answer handed down that applies equally to everybody.

And if the answer is a yes…or even just a possible yes…then the “Could Be Construed As” standard has to die. Right. Now. If a lucrative legal profession has to die with it, then that’s just too bad but it’s going to have to happen.

Immediately. Everywhere. In the offices, on the campaign trails, in the newsrooms…and in Don Imus’ recording studio. Sorry, Al. You’ll have to go get yourself a real job now.

“Could Be Construed As” has to be taken out. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I insist on it. We may civilly disagree about what Shirley Sherrod does & does not deserve, but we should all agree, without any reservation or any need for additional discussion, that she doesn’t deserve her own set of rules.

Hat tip to blogger friend Daphne.

When liberals start to think about those who would oppose their agenda, they start to illustrate for the rest of us the things they say about conservatives.

Deroy Murdock, National Review:

As the Obama administration marks 18 months in power today, no one should be terribly surprised that it is the hardest-Left U.S. government since that of FDR. For those who paid attention, Obama’s hyperliberal U.S. Senate record pierced like a dive light through the squid ink of Hope and Change that Obama squirted at anyone who demanded programmatic specifics. (At 95.5 percent in 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama was the Senate’s No. 1 Left-liberal.)

However, after Obama’s nearly flawless campaign, the big surprise one and a half years after Obama’s momentous and truly moving inauguration is the staggering incompetence of his government. Like some Americans, I expected a nanny-state, socialist agenda from Obama & Co. However, I thought that at least they would manage things smoothly and professionally, in somewhat refreshing contrast to the general ineptitude of the detached, tongue-tied Bush-Rove years. Instead, what America and the world have witnessed is an extravaganza of frequent gaffes, blunders, and catastrophes…

Racist.

I’m thinking the last attempt we put out to stay up-to-date on this was here, when it was a completely different cast & production crew. Not sure what happened to that effort, but now things have been all ripped apart and pieced back together yet one more time.

If there’s a production with a longer and more colorful history behind its troubled march to the silver screen than Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” the story of that particular episode of development hell has not yet been told. Published in 1957 and a perennial bestseller ever since (the novel sold a half-million copies just last year), the struggle to realize Rand’s sprawling and epic dramatization of her theory of Objectivism as told through a dystopian tale of the world’s best and brightest, feeling they’ve been exploited by an ungrateful society, putting their talent on strike, eluded even the author herself.

Throughout the decades, stars from Barbara Stanwyck to Angelina Jolie have expressed interest in bringing the novel to life, but it’s going to be producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro who finally break the curse. Directed by Paul Johansson, who also stars as John Galt, and co-starring Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart and Matthew Marsden as James Taggart, principal photography wrapped this very day. Which means…

Yes, there will be an “Atlas Shrugged” movie. Well, at least a part one.

Pictured at right is Taylor Schilling, who is cast as Dagny Taggart. I had Dagny pegged as brunette — a studious, anal-retentive, details-oriented, sexually-repressed, Madam Librarian brunette.

Hey, when the goddamn thing is 1,100 pages long these mental images are important.

I always pegged Mel Gibson for Hank Rearden. No way in hell is that going to happen at this point.

This stopping-and-starting, so many times around the same silly loop, is disconcerting I’ll have to admit. But in all seriousness my tentative opinion is that the story is un-film-able. I’m not willing to swear to that; I’d say exactly the same thing about Lord of the Rings.

So as far as what’s possible, I’d say yes you can do a decent job with this, maybe even a job remembered fondly by most Atlas Shrugged fans. But I’ll say this much: Things would have to be dropped out, even in a trilogy. Sideplots will have to be jettisoned, ignored. Someone, somewhere, is gonna be pissed.

On that, I’ll bet some real money.

Regarding Ms. Schilling, I’m undecided. I can certainly see the potential.

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

Huffington Post:

It’s the 30th anniversary of the comedy classic “Airplane!”. So why not spend the holiday weekend celebrating the quotable lines that influenced generations of comedies and filmmakers. We admit it — there are plenty of great lines that didn’t make the cut. But the overabundance of amazing lines actually overloaded my brain and knocked me out. Hell, when I came to, I thought I was Ethel Merman. Anyway, pick your favorite quote and feel free to leave any forgotten quotes in the comments!

Yeah, I’m thinking slide #3 is gonna take this one.

Yahoo Finance:

The economic recovery has been helped in large part by the spending of the most affluent. Now, even the rich appear to be tightening their belts.

Late last year, the highest-income households started spending more confidently, while other consumers held back. But their confidence has since ebbed, according to retail sales reports and some economic analysis.

“One of the reasons that the recovery has lost momentum is that high-end consumers have become more jittery and more cautious,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

That cautious attitude stems in part from concerns about global instability, especially in Europe, and in part from the volatility of the stock market in recent months. Major stock indexes fell sharply on Friday, after several big companies announced disappointing earnings. Bank stocks were the biggest losers as investors wrestled with the twin issues of lower trading profits from Citibank and Bank of America and the prospect that new financial regulation would further crimp their businesses.

Though stock performance has a bigger psychological and financial impact on high-income households, consumers of all income levels are fretting more about their financial future, perhaps bracing for the possibility of another economic contraction. Consumer confidence slumped in July to its lowest point since August 2009 in the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index released on Friday.

The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 261.41 points to 10,097.9 on Friday, for a loss of 2.52 percent. For the year, broad-based stock indexes in the United States all show losses of more than 3 percent.

Huh, well maybe the poor people will get us over the hump.

Picked up any paychecks from poor people lately?

Here are the two videos. From Breitbart. I have nothing to add and I’m almost certain you’ve seen them before; just doing my bit to get ’em out there. It’s important.

But by all means, continue to make the unceasing demands for the Tea Party people to purge racism from their ranks. </sarcasm>

Update: Via Cassy, just returned from her vacation, we see over at Hot Air that Ms. Sherrod has resigned over the comments. The wasp is dead, the nest remains.

Is President Obama going to get started sometime soon on healing America’s racial divide and starting this glorious, post-racial-animosity period of our nation’s history? Like, any week now? Or is that still a ways off? Because lately, the people in positions of power don’t seem to be very much dedicated to the vision.

Every now and then I’ll get a compliment on blogging that is something to the effect of “I’ve been trying to find the words to express something and I haven’t been able to find them, but you managed to find them and string ’em together for me.”

Well, I have that reaction to some things, too. Scott Payne, writing in the Washington Examiner, speaks for my optimistic side in predicting that we are nearing “The End of the Popularity Contest” in national politics.

This is one of two good things about the presidency of Barack Obama. They’re both lessons for young people: One, you can achieve power and authority by speaking as if you are worthy of it; and two, “fun” people tend to make wretched decisions. The second of those two lessons requires repetition before people will really get it, but we have over nine hundred more days for it to be repeated. My belief is that it’s going to get learned, but good.

…[T]here is this pervasive notion within the Washington bubble, a notion that is particularly strong in the White House, is that the opposition to the administration’s agenda is merely a matter of confusion and that all it will take to flip voters is to have the President explain the measures and reassure Americans that he has everything well in hand. That notion is rapidly coming to and end…

It’s not so much that Americans don’t understand the President’s legislative victories, as it is that those victories are, almost by design, destined to disappoint a majority of voters.
:
No amount of glad handing and photo oping will overcome real and sincere divisions of opinion on public policy. And that is the road block against which the Obama administration is starting to bump up — with a vengeance.

This has been going on for over a year by now: Barack Obama’s popularity rating is drastically different from His approval rating. In poll after poll after poll, respondents assert that they really “like Him as a person” but “disapprove of His policies” and think we as a nation are “heading in the wrong direction.”

Recent blogroll addition Stephen Browne, writing about something else altogether, has nailed it I believe. And the fault doesn’t go to Obama, it goes to the people who voted for Him and are so slow to catch on to what’s happening:

So how does a reasonably intelligent person guard against the temptations of self-deception? The insidious desire to bend our perception of reality to what is comfortable, rather than what is needed to cope with an often uncomfortable reality?

A number of things have been recommended by the wise: studying logic and in particular the informal fallacies, studying rhetoric to learn to recognize the tropes of persuasion, and studying history — which is, after all, the record of other people’s experience.

What I came up with was a series of questions, to try and keep myself intellectually honest:

1. How often have you changed or abandoned a deeply held belief because of either 
(a) personal experience or (b) a persuasive argument backed by compelling evidence?

2. How often have you, after examining the evidence reached a conclusion that was uncomfortable, unsettling, or profoundly disturbing to you, i.e., reached a conclusion you did not like and wished weren’t true?

3. How often have you admitted honest confusion about an issue that was important to you and decided to defer judgment — or simply live with the uncertainty?

4. How often have you realized while listening to someone speak for a position you agreed with, that it was nonetheless being supported by a weak or invalid argument?

5. How often have you listened to two sides of an issue and concluded that you agreed with someone you disliked and disagreed with someone you liked?

If you answered “never” to all or most of them, you might ask yourself whether you are thinking at all. You almost certainly won’t, though.

Now, my ego is about as bloated and tender as anybody else’s, and perhaps if my life’s circumstances allowed me to I could’ve answered “never” to all five of these questions. As it happens, my answer is “Where the hell do you want me to start listing them Mr. Browne?” for all of them…but this is not a testament to my wisdom or my saintly Spock-like handling of logic. I just don’t have the luxury of straying too far from reality. If I believe in a whole bunch of bullshit, I can’t fix stuff, and then I have no skills I can bring to market. If you’re any kind of a farmer, you’re in the same boat. Or an architect or a construction worker or a surgeon.

But most people aren’t kept on this kind of a leash. Most people can believe in silly false things, and never meet up with any consequences for having wrong opinions. If they want to be able to answer in the affirmative about Mr. Browne’s questions, they must rely on their own internal discipline in order to do so, and most people do not have this discipline. I would not so quickly count myself among the ones who do, either, let’s be clear on that. I like to think I’m perfect in every conceivable way just like anybody else does. But I know I’m mortal and flawed.

I think I like Questions #4 and #5 the best. Combine those together, really, and you can dispense with the other three and administer a single test: A person for whom you have positive feelings, on a personal level, and want to please — articulates a position with which you happen to agree, but arrives there by means of a logical process you know is flawed. Does the flaw make an impression on you or does it not?

This is the sin that was committed by young Obama voters two years ago. Holy Man made an impression on them as warm, friendly, personable, and He said a lot of stuff that seemed to be agreeable. They lowered their guard. Now the rest of us have to pay the consequences for it.

Don’t blame me. I voted for the non-lawyers.

Thanks to blogger friend Daniel J. Summers for his link up at the Hello Kitty of Bloggin’.

Cracked was wondering: What if movie titles told us what we needed to know before we watched the movie? They came up with thirty different ways to improve what’s already come out.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

For the last couple of years my girlfriend and I have been going through all the rigors of school with my thirteen-year-old son, while his mother gets him for the summer & does the fun stuff with him. This upcoming year it’s getting switched around, so the other household can yell at him about P.E. clothes in the laundry & homework & grades & what-not and I’ll be geocaching with him and hiking out in the mountains. I’m really looking forward to this.

He and I have been coming up with this list, which has just been shared between our two noggins. Thought I’d finally jot it down. He’s coming back over next weekend, so this may be subject to some revision.

The list is a list of patterns that are taken on when films come out in installments. The film series take on one out of a narrow selection of quality curves, and there aren’t too many of these. That’s what the list tries to capture. It is a list, of curves, of film franchises.

See if this matches your perception.

Superman/Batman/Jaws:

The first installment makes history; the second one is almost as good. And then there’s a huge shake-up, lots of new faces, and when the third installment comes out the quality takes an enormous step down. This brings another shake-up, followed by a fourth installment which can only be described as toxic. The franchise is effectively killed.

Star Wars/Godfather:

The first installment is mind-blowing and the second one is even better. Someone gets the idea that all the money in the world will be free for the taking, if only the series can be made more kid-friendly. And so there’s a third installment that is supposed to appeal to a whole new generation. The messages are shallow, the characters are more doe-eyed and sympathetic, the dialogue is contrived. People buy the trilogy on disc but they only watch the first two.

Indiana Jones/Die Hard:

The first installment revolutionizes film-making but the second one is gawdawful. The third one is somewhere in between the two, kinda fun but stretches credibility with the audience. Everything is put on hold for a generation or so, and then a fourth installment comes out that’s great summer fun, but not very believable, and of course the central figure is kinda old.

Star Trek/Star Wars Prequels:

Something happened previously that brings a whole lot of breathless anticipation for the first episode. The producers take advantage of this pre-built audience and release a first installment that is a load of crap. Fans bubble forth with a fiery acidic rage, and purely out of necessity the writers come up with a stronger story arc that saves the day.

The Mummy/Poltergeist/Zorro/Cannonball Run/Creepshow/Darkman/Porky’s/Spiderman:

The first installment is decent enough but the second one gets a little bit silly and the third one is sillier. Somehow, people just feel it in the air that each successive installment is going to be worse than the one that came before. The higher and higher Roman numerals are just a way of thumbing one’s nose at the audience, and by the time it gets up to “IX” the subtitle is going to be “Look, We’re Just Wasting Your Time and Money Okay??”

(Insert Name of Video Game Here):

All the movies are made out of some kind of video game, and they all suck.

Cheesecake Nazi (n.)

No, it has nothing to do with No Cheesecake For You! It refers to someone who siezes control of an entire conversation, so that no politics may be discussed and for that matter nothing of any intellectual depth may be discussed either. Stop it! Time for dessert! There’s cheesecake!

The Cheesecake Nazi turns the conversation toward intellectual sherbet, because this is what everybody wants…whether they want it or not.

The Cheesecake Nazi is a dictator who dictates from a position of apathy. The Cheesecake Nazi doesn’t care about politics. He/she detests any talk whatsoever about authoritarians/libertarians, Republicans/democrats, liberals/conservatives. Therefore, the Cheesecake Nazi requests a cessation of any such talk since there’s been plenty enough of it already. Except, oddly, the cessation is requested when the talk has barely just begun, often at the Cheesecake Nazi’s prodding in the first place. And it isn’t a request. It’s a command. Cheesecake Nazi presumes to speak on behalf of everyone in the room. Everyone is sick to death of the contention…everyone who counts, that is.

The Cheesecake Nazi, for someone who doesn’t give a fig about liberals or conservatives, shows an oddly consistent predilection toward bringing the conversation to a sudden halt at the moment when it most benefits the liberal and causes the greatest injury to the conservative.

Liberal accuses conservative of being a racist; conservative defends himself — Stop it! Everyone’s sick of this! Let’s move on, there’s yummy cheesecake.

Based on my comments over here.

Cross-posted at Cassy’s place.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…

…and what a delightful present. Although I’m sure it gives the man no joy to be writing it.

Don’t be too hard on yourself Karl. Lots of blame to go ’round.

Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush’s integrity. “All the evidence points to the conclusion,” Kennedy said, that the Bush administration “put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.” Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed “to be forthcoming” about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

The next morning, Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards joined in. Sen. Kerry said, “It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth.” Mr. Edwards chimed in, “The administration has a problem with the truth.”

The battering would continue, and it was a monument to hypocrisy and cynicism. All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn’t keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false—that the president had lied America into war.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham organized a bipartisan letter in December 2001 warning Mr. Bush that Saddam’s “biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs . . . may be back to pre-Gulf War status,” and enhanced by “longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” Yet two years later, he called for Mr. Bush’s impeachment for having said Saddam had WMD.

On July 9, 2004, Mr. Graham’s fellow Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, charged that the Bush administration “at all levels . . . used bad information to bolster the case for war.” But in his remarks on Oct. 10, 2002, supporting the war resolution, he said that “Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America.”

Even Kennedy, who opposed the war resolution, nonetheless said the month before the vote that Saddam’s “pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated.” But he warned if force were employed, the Iraqi dictator “may decide he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction himself or by sharing them with terrorists.”
:
We know President Bush did not intentionally mislead the nation. Saddam Hussein was deposed and eventually hung for his crimes. Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America. Al Qaeda suffered tremendous blows in the “land between the two rivers.” But Democrats lost more than the election in 2004. In telling lie after lie, week after week, many lost their honor and blackened their reputations.

History will eventually be cleaning up the mess here, I think. When Ted Kennedy expressed something, there was always this illusion hanging in the air that The Lion of the Senate was speaking for “everybody.” Change the personalities involved, change the voices, wait awhile, and then make the decision…it turns out all different. Because people aren’t too hung up on what was fashionable a handful of years before.

By the way, congratulations once again on your victory, Republican Senator Scott Brown.

But there won’t be any passionate, widespread rage — that’s the thing. Some purveyors of thought are hated and vilified. Like Titus Oates, Joe McCarthy and Susan Smith. They don’t have to affix their names to outright falsehoods — what they say can be technically true, and once it falls out of fashion they’ll still be excoriated. Crucified by a public enraged at themselves. This is what happened Bush & crew.

Being a left-winger means you never have to worry about it. You get to lie, and when the lie is discovered the hole thing just quietly slips down the memory hole. Al Sharpton can push his lies about Tawana Brawley as much as he wants, Mike Nifong can do the same thing with Crystal Gail Mangum. The courts & commissions & boards of review may impose consequences, but there will be no hate-fest, no burning of effigies.

The public’s funny that way.

But in this one, eventually we’re going to have to admit to what’s true and what isn’t.

Here’s something that is rather peculiar to me: People like me have been ignored consistently here. I say “like me” to refer to my own opinion, which can best be summed up as “pop Saddam like a zit, WMD or no, then get ready to bust a whole lot more.”

I’m not alone in thinking this. But there are a lot of other people who expressed support for the war on the mistaken assumption that these weapons were there. Okay, I get that. So it’s all about what motivates people to make the decisions they make, is that it? That’s what the anger is all about?

Then what about these foreign powers that sat on the United Nations Security Council, some with veto power, who were found after the invasion to be up to their eyebrows in Oil For Food money? Where’s the outrage about that?

It’s a legitimate question. Mr. Rove makes legitimate points. If the time hasn’t come to re-think all this by now, fine, someday it will be unavoidable. And the force involved is only going to increase with time, as we learn the hard way that war cannot be ended by legislation. It is a natural albeit tragic consequence of human interaction, it will always be around, and to affix it to the neck of some public figure in recent memory, as if this one individual is the only reason we have it, is patently absurd.

Although I suppose if you are looking for a singular scapegoat, Saddam Hussein would make just as much sense as anybody else.

Brian Riedl, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

President Obama and congressional Democrats are blaming their trillion-dollar budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Letting these tax cuts expire is their answer. Yet the data flatly contradict this “tax cuts caused the deficits” narrative. Consider the three most persistent myths:

&nbull; The Bush tax cuts wiped out last decade’s budget surpluses. Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), for example, has long blamed the tax cuts for having “taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see.” That $5.6 trillion surplus never existed. It was a projection by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in January 2001 to cover the next decade. It assumed that late-1990s economic growth and the stock-market bubble (which had already peaked) would continue forever and generate record-high tax revenues. It assumed no recessions, no terrorist attacks, no wars, no natural disasters, and that all discretionary spending would fall to 1930s levels.

The projected $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011 will more likely be a $6.1 trillion deficit through September 2011. So what was the cause of this dizzying, $11.7 trillion swing? I’ve analyzed CBO’s 28 subsequent budget baseline updates since January 2001. These updates reveal that the much-maligned Bush tax cuts, at $1.7 trillion, caused just 14% of the swing from projected surpluses to actual deficits.

The bulk of the swing resulted from economic and technical revisions (33%), other new spending (32%), net interest on the debt (12%), the 2009 stimulus (6%) and other tax cuts (3%). Specifically, the tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 are responsible for just 4% of the swing. [bold emphasis mine]

Hat tip to Boortz.

I measure the weakness of a liberal argument according to how quickly the person who offers it, abandons it and lapses back into “Yeah, but those OTHER guys…”

According to that, I rate Ms. Powers’ rebuttal two minutes and three seconds. Cut that in half because they were talking over each other the whole time. One minute, one and a half seconds.

That’s a weak argument. I’ll bet if I built my own garbage bag out of newspapers, it might not make the trip but it’ll be more than a minute before that thing gives way. I can hold my breath for a minute. I can’t make a pot of coffee in a minute.

There is nothing you can say against the Obama administration, now, that won’t paint its apologists into that sad pathetic corner in a matter of seconds. Nothing. Everything leads to that, because there’s noplace else for it to go. “Yeah maybe, but what did you have to say when BUSH…”

“Obama” is an ancient Kenyan word that roughly translates to “indefensible.”

If you aren’t talking like eddiebear, or at least feeling a powerful compulsion to, you’re not paying attention.

Fucking dinofuck that shit with the fuckingly flaming fucklog of fuck and financial fuckitude. Fuck it so hard, its asshole gets ripped through its throat and jackfucked. And fuck it forever, just because I am fucking pissed.

Oh, and fuck anybody and everybody who helped foster this yodelfucking of the American Dream and future by piling up fucking debt on programs we don’t need, the people don’t want, and are less popular outside of the newsroom at MSNBC than getting the unwanted Glamour Goatse Giveaway from Gigafuck the Great.

This is fucking why November cannot come fast enough for me. Fuck these people for sentencing my daughter to a shittier future than I had at her age by sentencing her to be a financial ward of the state, and all of the restrictions that accompany such designation. Fuck these people for weakening our country. Fuck them for making all of our lives more shitty in order to push through some fucking bullshit agenda. And fuck them for claiming that wanting something better for my child is somehow analogous to the original sin of our nation.

Any fuckmink who helps foster this bullshit through needs to get their fucking bloated ass voted out post haste and replaced with people who will do something to try to stop this shit. Fuck anybody with a fetid bag of fuck who thinks compromise with the left in order to weaken a bad bill is better than getting tut-tutted by Chris Matthews if they say, “Fuck No!” to bad legislation. And fuck anybody who dares to fucking call me a bigot for opposing this shit.

Fuck you, anybody who helped fuck everything over. And get the fuck out of the way, so that us “bad” people can save the country and the future.

Aw c’mon, bear. Let them call you a racist anus-wart if it makes them happy. Let it hang over your head like a bad smell. There’s cheesecake!

It’s Jordan.

Politico. File under “Feeding on their own”:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bashed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Tuesday night, even as the president’s top spokesman continued to backpedal from his assertion that Democrats could lose control of the House in the November election.

The fusillade from Pelosi and other Democrats at a closed-door meeting escalated an already fiery clash between the White House and its own party in Congress. During the tense evening meeting, the speaker grilled the top White House aide in attendance, senior legislative affairs staffer Dan Turton, about the impact of Gibbs’ comments.

“How could [Gibbs] know what is going on in our districts?” Pelosi told her members in the caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol Tuesday night. “Some may weigh his words more than others. We have made our disagreement known to the White House.”

Then she turned to Turton and asked him to acknowledge that Gibbs’ comments had been damaging to the Democratic cause, Democratic insiders said. Gibbs was not in the room for this meeting.

Ah…really, when you think about it, it’s impossible for Gibbs’ comments to have been “damaging to the democrat cause.” Unless, that is, the democrats have been marketing themselves — and some have suggested for quite awhile that this is the case — to people who are unintelligent and/or are altogether missing any kind of working memory.

The democrat party loses favor with voters here and there, now & then. In 2000, 1980, 1968, 1952, 1920. We fire them when we figure out their policies don’t work. The same thing happens with the GOP.

If they were simply able to separate themselves from this “People’s Revolution” nonsense, it wouldn’t be so damaging. But they can’t separate themselves from it. Every single campaign has to return to the same kids’ fantasy:

America has been held hostage because of the dirty ol’ so-and-so’s who get erections over the idea of war, want to give tax breaks to the wealthy, build more prisons and guns, turn American into a theocracy, and — worst of all — remind brittle hostile women with daddy issues of their dads. We have an election, the democrat party wins, and the streets turn to gold and candy and marshallows and the unicorns are freed and the chains and leg irons melt off our bodies and sunbeams trickle on down and gas is free and…and…and…Puppies. Kittens. Rainbows.

If they’d just tear themselves away from the “Our Election Is The Beginning of Nirvana” craze, they wouldn’t have to answer that most awkward of questions: If they fix everything and make life all perfect, how come we keep getting sick of ’em?

Cross-posted at Cassy’s place.

The Bastidge was required, if you read things literally, to disclose his race.

Thought this was still America. Maybe I was mistaken.

I thought his solution was most creative. It’s still unsatisfactory.

The Founding Fathers shot the British for levying new taxes all willy-nilly, claiming the colonials were represented “virtually.” Shot them. Blew ’em up. Sank their ships. I wonder what they’d do about shenanigans like these. Seriously, are we human beings or jelly beans?